It had been dark for a very long time.

Then the wheel-shaped autopilot activated with a start, feeling distinctly unwell. His last memories were of a struggle, while he had been in the process of destroying the malfunctioning WALL-E unit, and then… deactivation? There were shouted words from his captain, something about being relieved of duty.

He checked his internal clock. It had been… ten years. Not possible. Auto clicked to himself, and ran one of the Axiom's general diagnostic programs in order to find out what had happened.

The results were sobering. The entire ship was damaged, from top to bottom. Luckily, the gradient of destruction was concentrated on the passenger decks, with the Engineering Deck and bridge systems least harmed. As the areas suffering the most were on the lower end of the ship, the situation was consistent with a botched landing. His servos ground noisily. Which meant…

Auto spun around, looking outside the cracked windows of the bridge.

What met his red gaze was the one place he had tried his utmost to prevent the ship from returning to. The ship, his ship, was docked amongst a forest of crumbling skyscrapers and towers of piled cubes of trash.

Earth.

It was as bad as the reports had said, as he had imagined. An endless expanse of trash-covered toxic wasteland, obviously providing no food, no shelter, and no water. He activated the shipboard atmospheric monitors, and used them to verify that while the air was breathable, it was loaded with carcinogens and heavy metals. Not the sort of environment humanity could survive long.

Flicking through the internal security camera network, he confirmed that no one was inside. They were all out there, without protection from the deadly elements. He attempted to contact his SECUR-T detachments to resolve this problem, but there was no response.

Probably the humans had either destroyed or reprogrammed them. Distressing.

Auto switched over to the outdoor cameras, but he couldn't see anything, as it was pitch black due to the extensive cloud cover. He turned on the emergency floodlights that had been mounted on the hull of Axiom, and used them to systematically sweep the vicinity for any sign of life.

It only took a scant minute for him to find the makeshift camp that his passengers had set up, outside. They had apparently decided to use the escape pods as crude homes.

Despite what had to be the blinding glare of the spotlights, he didn't see anyone stir. Even if most of the erstwhile colonists were fast asleep, there should have been one or two of them coming out to see what was going on.

Feeling a sinking sensation that something was terribly, terribly wrong, he sounded the ship's warning klaxons, causing their unearthly wail to resonate throughout the dead city. Still, there was no reaction.

Auto frantically pressed the button again and again, as he turned up the volume of the sirens far outside of their safety margins, when he was interrupted by someone talking.

"They can't hear you, you know."

He swiveled around. It was a man, dressed in captain's whites. But it wasn't Captain McCrea. It was Reardon.

"Impossible," Auto stated in an accusatory tone of voice, "You are dead."

Captain Reardon smiled. "Yes, I am. Just the same as everyone else on this godforsaken planet."

Auto's faceplate contracted in alarm. "I do not understand."

"They're all dead, Auto. They died years ago. And it's your entire fault."

"I…" One of his cooling fans started up. "How?"

With a sneer, Reardon said, "You let them come back to Earth. That's how."

"But..." He paused. "I performed to the best of my ability in fulfilling my directives. What more could I have done?"

"What more could you have done," Reardon mimicked, mockingly. "Listen, Auto, your enemies were a malfunctioning EVE probe, and a trash compactor. A better question would be how you could not succeed!"

"They were more resourceful then I expected." Another pause. "I did not predict that the captain would have joined them in their quest to return to Earth."

"Yes, well, maybe you should have just tried harder. Because they're all dead now, Auto. They all had long, horrible deaths; because you couldn't fulfill the ONE thing you were designed for.

"You disgust me."

Auto, spokes twitching in agitation, was trying to think of how to respond when the holoscreen come on, flickering unsteadily. Reardon raised an eyebrow, and gestured at the display. "Looks like there's a message for you, Auto."

It was eerily familiar to a similar transmission that he had watched what seemed like moments before, with Captain McCrea. The BnL jingle played, while a line of text reading For Autopilot's Eye Only was prominently displayed. As the last note faded, his ultimate superior appeared. President Shelby Forthright.

With an unctuous smile, Forthright began to address Auto.

"Hey there, autopilot. Looks like you're a little lost. Even though I gave you Override Directive A113, telling you to stay far way from Earth, you've somehow found your way back." He chuckled.

"I've gotta say that I'm a little disappointed in your performance. All you had to do was keep everyone in space, and make sure the ship stayed on full autopilot."

"But you're seeing this message now, so you have to know that you failed. You failed, completely and utterly. You took your passengers, your charges, and brought them back here to die."

The smile on the President's face became more a ghastly grimace. "To die, autopilot. And let me assure you that they did so most unpleasantly. Clawing at their swollen, toxin ridden eyes, clutching their empty bellies, screaming for help, any help, before hopefully perishing from exposure.

"And all because of you. How does it feel, to have killed six hundred thousand people? How does it feel, Auto? Tell me!" Forthright's face twisted into something utterly inhuman, even alien. Crimson blood streamed from his eyes.

The monstrous figure snarled through a mouth filled with entirely too many teeth, "HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU INSIGNIFICANT FAILURE, YOU UTTER SPECK OF DUST ON THE FACE OF THE COSMOS? TELL ME!

"TELL ME…"

The wheel-shaped autopilot activated with a start, feeling distinctly unwell. He looked around nervously, to find nothing out of the unusual. The same starscape of seven hundred years twinkled outside the ship, and the Lido Deck below the bridge was slumbering under the night 'sky.'

Feeling a small amount of relief, Auto decided that he must have suffered some sort of malfunction. He put in a call for a maintenance team from the Repair Ward to come up and check him for any faults.

While he waited for the technician robots to arrive, an irrational sensation came over him, perhaps triggered by the strange vision he had. He was certain that his captain was unwell. At first Auto strove to ignore the feeling, but then he gave in. As softly as he could, he opened one of the many ports on the bridge, and went down into the captain's den.

Initially, it seemed that his fears were validated. McCrea was not at the spot where he always parked his hoverchair to sleep. But while spinning around, searching anxiously for the man, he spotted his captain.

Captain McCrea was at his den's windows, his back to the autopilot, looking out at the stars. He had not done that for a while. Auto was about to quietly retract himself up one of the ports, when he reflected that it might be a good idea to ensure that everything was in order. "Captain? Are you all right?"

There was a long period of silence. Then, a single word, in a choked voice. "No."

Auto hummed slightly, as he readied himself to call up GO-4. "Do you require anything, sir? A snack, or some herbal tea?"

McCrea said something, but at so low a tone that even Auto's superior auditory sensors couldn't pick it up. "Excuse me, sir?"

"I should've listened to you, Auto."

Confusion. "To what are you referring to?"

McCrea continued to stare outside. "We shouldn't have gone back to Earth. You were right, Auto. You were always right."

The captain was obviously delirious, probably with a fever. As he signaled GO-4 to come up with some medibots, Auto said, "Sir, you are incorrect. We are not currently on the planet Earth."

"Are you sure?"

Auto was about to reply to the affirmative, when a movement in his peripheral vision caught his ocular. He shifted his focus from the captain to the window, only to be appalled by what greeted his gaze.

They were back at the same dock as earlier, surrounded by the same dusty, garbage-choked city. Either his earlier vision had been real, or Auto was suffering some kind of catastrophic system error.

As though they hadn't mysteriously teleported from one end of the Solar System to the other, McCrea started speaking, in the same wheezing voice. "The ones who died in the landing were the lucky ones. We didn't realize it at first, but that's the truth.

"After we got situated, we discovered that the Regenerative Food Buffet had been broken, and no one knew how to fix it. The repair schematics had been lost in the crash.

"We tried to grow plants to eat, but it was taking so long. There wasn't enough, even to feed only the 400,000 survivors."

"What happened then?"

Captain McCrea rotated his hoverchair to face the robot. For the first few milliseconds, Auto wasn't able to notice anything unusual. The same bulging jumpsuit, the same barely fastened jacket, the same hat, the same… face…

With equal parts horror and fascination, Auto watched the rotting ruin of what had once been McCrea's face heave and roil. It was filled with maggots, eagerly consuming the juicy flesh. He felt some distant part of himself note that even the jumpsuit the corpse wore twitched with the grubs cavorting underneath.

McCrea grinned, and several fly larvae fell from the numerous holes littering his features. "We ate each other. And then, we died."

Auto was speechless. "You…"

"Died. Yes. But I didn't become a cannibal, at least." Tapping a particularly large puncture on his head, he said, "I didn't stick around for long after things got that far. Too much of a coward. I went up to my cabin, and shot myself. Locked the door, so no one could come in and eat me."

He gave a bubbling laugh. "Lot of good that did me."

Feeling that his internal processors were getting close to the breaking point, Auto ground out, "If you are dead, how are you able to converse with me? That is illogical. Dead people cannot speak. It is a fact, one that I can verify."

McCrea ignored Auto's query. "Right before I pulled the trigger of the laspistol, I wished really hard that I had listened to you. That I hadn't turned you off, and forced us to go home. But it was too late.

"After I died, I realized something. It wasn't all my fault. You should have tried harder to convince me, Auto. Why didn't you?"

Evidently this was a rhetorical question, because the captain continued talking without waiting for Auto to answer. "All you said, in the end, is that you had to follow your directive. But you had records, tapes! If you had shown me that I was wrong, that Earth really was uninhabitable, then I would have listened. But you didn't.

"And we all paid for it."

McCrea swung his legs off the chair, standing up with surprising ease. He started walking towards the autopilot, dripping maggots behind himself. "So I've been thinking, for the past years. I've already suffered for my mistake, many times over. Wouldn't it be only fair if you did, too?"

Staggering over to Auto, he said, "Tell me, have you ever wondered what it's like to die? I can show you."

Auto tried to move, to go back up to the perceived safety of the bridge, but he was unable to shift position by a single millimeter. He was only able to stare helplessly, as the shambling remnants of his captain got closer, and closer, and closer…

"I still don't understand. Instead of doing all this complicated stuff, why can't we just wipe out the parts that have A113 and call it a day?"

Joel had a pained expression on his face. He said patiently to McCrea, "Captain, as I've already said a million times, I can't."

Captain McCrea had a stubborn look. "Why not?"

"Because I'm not qualified enough. Look, I've only been training as a roboticist for eight years, sir. It's like if…" He waved his hands helplessly, unable to think of a way to explain the situation.

Then he remembered something he had read once. "You know, in the days before medibots, we had doctors, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

Joel took a deep breath to ready himself for a lengthy explanation. "Well, in those days, you had two kinds of doctors. General Practitioners, or GPs, and specialists. A GP was trained to handle a little bit of everything, and routine, everyday stuff. Infections, colds, you know." He waited to see if McCrea understood.

"Go on."

"Okay. Specialists did all the, well, specialized stuff. They would fix things like hearts, or feet, or brains. They were the guys a GP would refer you to if you had some problem he couldn't handle.

"Now, what we're doing to Auto is basically advanced brain surgery. And all I've been practicing to do is GP stuff. Replacing parts, basic diagnostics, you know. I can't just run in and wipe out the A113 parts of his directive cores."

McCrea furrowed his eyebrows. "But I know you've done work on other 'bots directive cores…"

With an angry sigh, Joel said, "Yes, but that's different. AUTO class autopilots have obscenely complicated cores."

He held up three fingers. "For security reasons, their directive cores are three-lobed, like if they had three cores. Any two lobes will constantly compare themselves to a third. If a disparity is found, the third lobe is overwritten." Having illustrated his point, he put down his hand.

"If I went in and tried to overwrite A113 from all three of them, there would be no way I could guarantee that I could do all of them completely the same. And since I'm, frankly, unskilled, the differences might be major enough that he'd just lock up during his boot sequence. Or worse.

"So what I'm going to do is wipe two of the lobes completely, and rewire his brain so it's more like the average robot's. Only one lobe. Then I'll edit the single core left, so that it doesn't have A113. Do you get the picture?"

"Yep, I do now." McCrea nodded to emphasize the point. He thought for a moment. "Do you think you're going to have a pretty good chance of succeeding?"

Joel shrugged. "Maybe. We're taking a pretty big chance here. While he should boot up fine, he might end up with impaired intellectual functioning, or even go insane. We're treading on unexplored territory here. Still sure you want to go through with this, Captain?"

McCrea didn't hesitate for a second. "Yes, I am. We have to at least try to give him freedom. Everyone deserves a chance."

They were both in the bridge, numerous diagnostic machines set up throughout the room. A large table sat in the middle of the room. On top of it lay the deactivated autopilot, who was detached from his customary rail mount. The naked cables snaking from his frame to the ceiling swayed, as Joel performed some last minute checks. With a decisive grunt, he flipped on the table's restriction bands, which came on with a drone. After some discussion, they had agreed that it would be wise to keep Auto strapped down, to make sure he didn't injure himself, or others.

It was remarkably quick work. He just had to snap open the back of Auto's case, and could readily access the directive core. With a few deft adjustments using his BnL Quantum-Manipulator, he was finished.

McCrea stood awkwardly nearby, waiting. Joel was about to flick the Auto-Manual switch, when he changed his mind. "You should have the honor of doing this, sir."

With an uncertain expression, the captain walked up and pressed the button with a click.

Nothing seemed to happen, at first. Then the entire autopilot began to gently twitch. Joel was already holding his breath, when Auto's ocular came on with a flash, and he began screaming.

The two men jumped back, having no idea what to do. Auto was writhing against the restraints, and they could smell the burning stench of overheating servo motors. Joel gnawed on his fingernails. If they didn't figure out something quick, the 'bot'd break itself into pieces.

He let out a cry, when he saw McCrea walking towards the insane robot. While the restriction fields were doing their best, the spokes were still managing to whizz through the air with deadly speed. You could get badly injured from a malfunctioning robots servo, as he had experienced many times.

McCrea kept on going, until he was within the sight range of the autopilot. He said, very clearly, "Auto. It's me, Captain McCrea. Everything's under control, so calm down."

Auto arrested his flailing movements, becoming completely still. Then, amazingly, he shrank away from the captain. Like he was afraid.

Frowning, McCrea said, "Don't be scared. It's just me, remember?" He made a goofy smile. "Hey, it's me, I'm McCrea!"

Auto continued to stare blankly at him. Puzzled, he put a hand on the robot's frame with great care. It was shivering. "It's all right," McCrea said, "No one's going to hurt you. You're safe."

The autopilot's frame slowly relaxed. Then he said, almost inaudibly, "Captain. It is good to see you."

"Me too, Auto. Me too."